The Other Tape
by Beckles1987
Summary: What if Gene found another of Alex's tapes?


**This was inspired by Taylor Swift's song 'I'd lie' and is probably not my best writing but I'm incapable of not publising a finished fic.**

**The first section of the tape was recorded between 207 and 208, the second after Gene suspended her and threatened to kill her, the third after she woke up the day of Operation Rose.  
**

* * *

_I don't know when I stopped getting annoyed at being made to sit in the Quattro's passenger seat while Gene threw us around blind corners, an uncomfortably accurate metaphor for my life here in the 1980s, but I have. I trust him now, so implicitly, that being in his car is actually one of the places I feel the safest. The thrill of the adrenaline rushing through my body, my quickening pulse, I enjoy it all, revel in my reaction to his driving. Sometimes it's all I can do not to smile, to bite my lip and not give him the satisfaction of knowing he excites me, even if it's just by breaking as many traffic laws as humanly possible. When things go our way, when even Gene's happiness is borderline obvious, I stop fighting it, hiding my grin only by turning my head to look out of the window. I don't think that passenger seat has ever looked this good to me._

_It's a rare evening when I don't find myself sitting with him in Luigi's, listening to him moan about whatever is annoying him most on any given day, sitting in companionable silence or dancing around the attraction neither of us can bear to openly acknowledge. It's a ritual so familiar it's automatic, the criticism of his actions, opinions…it just slips off my tongue and his criticism of my clothes, bum, education and mental state seems equally natural and equally without malice. He never seems to notice the way my gaze lingers on his eyes as I count the colours; pale blue, green, grey…just the way I don't seem to notice the way he isn't averse to glancing down my blouse when the way I sit gives him a momentarily better view._

_On one rather memorable night he'd sworn that he would never fall in love, not something he'd normally share. In his defence, he'd been pretty drunk at the time, running his fingers though his hair in an attempt to get it into some semblance of order but only making it more of a mess. I'd laughed, knowing that while he was probably telling the truth I was, am, still hoping he was wrong. It's a vain hope, I know that, but there is a part of me that wants to find out what it would be like if we took a chance and really made a go of it. It will never happen, I am your mum first and foremost. I am going back to 2008 if it kills me, and I'm beginning to suspect that it might involve my death in 1982 anyway. As for Gene…aside from his issues with women and relationships, he's the Guv, my boss, before anything else._

_After his admission, he'd made some sarcastic comment, the closest he ever came to joking, and I'd faked a smile._

_I don't think it's ever crossed his mind just how well I know him. I know his favourite songs; the ones that make him tap the beat on the Quattro's steering wheel or Luigi's floor, the ones he doesn't deride even when they aren't in vogue. On the surface he is almost a caricature of himself, a collection of stereotypes and clichés that somehow escaped from the seventies…and that person, 'the Gene Genie' is a creation born of necessity and circumstance, a mask of his own face. It's something for him to hide behind and, thanks to Sam Tyler, I know some of what he's hiding. I know that he didn't have a happy childhood or a happy marriage, something we have in common. Sam's death and his divorce are still a weight he carries. If he ever feels happy now he tries his damnedest not to show it. The Gene Sam knew laughed, it's something I've never seen for myself._

_I wish you could meet him Molls, that you could get to know him. I know it's impossible but maybe I could tell you about him when I see you again. I could tell you his favourite colour's green…despite the fact that his car and a couple of ties are vibrant, screaming red and Manchester City plays in blue, he likes green. He told me once, and then got defensive about it. He always gets flustered when he shares something like that, as if he can't believe he's said it and he's embarrassed about being himself. I feel sorry for him, being so uncomfortable about being himself around people, but on the other hand it's an endearing sight and he normally acts like he has an ego the size of the O2 arena. I wore a green blouse the next day, just because. I got a raised eyebrow and a 'nice shirt' with my coffee. I thought it was worth it._

_He loves to argue with me, even when we're almost screaming at one another. It's gotten to the point where it's almost our main form of communication. We both enjoy it. He likes that I stand up to him even if it infuriates him at the same time. It's almost like fore…uh flirting. Our hearts beat faster, we get an adrenaline rush… If one of us was braver or stupider we'd have kissed in the middle of one of our fights by now._

_His birthday's the seventeenth of January. He didn't celebrate the last one any differently than he celebrates the end of another day. He sat with me in Luigi's and let other people buy him drinks. I don't imagine he ever enjoyed his childhood birthdays and after a certain age birthdays are just an excuse to go out and get drunk. Gene doesn't need the excuse._

_I caught him looking at an old photograph once, colour, from the early sixties. A Gene twenty years younger than the one I know was stood with his arm around a woman who could only have been his mother. She was practically glowing with pride, beaming into the camera, even Gene was smiling. I think he'd just been promoted. His mother's beautiful, or was. I told him so. "She can't 'ear you from 'ere Bolly, no need to kiss arse", was the reply I got. Although with the way he went quiet after, I think he was happy I said it. They looked very much alike, except for the eyes. He has his father's eyes._

_  
As a DCI, there's very little that he misses. You don't become a good copper if you're not perceptive but I swear Molls, when it comes to this, to me, he just doesn't seem to see clearly. He looks around the room, innocently overlooks the truth…well as innocently as he can do anything. He sees Ray reading playboy inside the paper, inside a case file. He knows when Chris is about to follow Shaz into the kitchen so they can have a couple of minutes together while she waits for the kettle to boil, he knows before either of them have said a word or moved a muscle. But he passes off every moment we have as something else. Every time one of us reaches out in some way, small or otherwise, it's alcohol, the fact that I just narrowly escaped death again, a joke…even when his face is inches from mine, even when he says that it's the two of us against everything, nothing. Shouldn't a light go on?_

_  
Doesn't he know that I've had him memorized for so long? Every day, his face is there with yours as one of the first and last things I think about. Thanks to Sam and my own experiences, he's been in my life for four years…in one way or another. That's longer than your dad, longer than anybody except Evan. I can summon his voice, his expressions, his entire being from memory. I don't know how I'll ever get him out of my system…at this point I don't know if I even want to. Until I came here Evan was the constant in my life, he was my rock, but now I don't trust him like I did before. I know the truth about him and your grandma and, as irrational as it might be, part of me blames him for what happened. When I get back I won't really have anybody but you Molls. I'm savouring what time I have left with him and the others, even Ray. Leaving here is going to hurt._

_It's been almost a year since I saw you last, almost your birthday again. I'll be there for this one, I can feel it. I won't be crying in this apartment, I'll be with you. I'll do almost anything to get home. Operation Rose is my ticket out of here. I just know it is. I just have to help Gene stop a group of dangerous, powerful and corrupt police officers. Sometimes it's felt like I might as well try curing cancer as well as getting home for all the progress I've made but this is different. I believe, I have to believe, that I'm close to seeing you again. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't, probably go as crazy as he thinks I already am. He calls me Mrs Fruitcake you know, he thinks following his hunches is a legitimate method of investigation but when it comes to my psychological insights anybody would think I'd asked him to arrest somebody based on female intuition and he sees everything black and white. It's beyond frustrating. There's his way and the wrong way. He's so cocksure. He has this swagger, a contagious confidence that makes the entire team walk taller. I've seen them without him there…the department was like a balloon with the air let out. Everybody shrank. I think it's even affected me. I'm different here, more alive somehow. I don't want to lose that. If I can't bring Bolly Knickers into 2008 then losing what I have here is going to be even more painful._

_Sometimes, most of the time, I forget how much he has to deal with, on top of being DCI and seeing the worst of humanity day in day out. He sees death most weeks…I don't know exactly what horrors from Gene's childhood haunt him but I know that sometimes, when he looks at a female or child victim, he's not seeing, he's remembering. On cases like that there's a barely contained ferocity that keeps even Ray on task, an anger that eclipses anything I can provoke out of him, and the ghost of an old pain. I don't know if I'm the only one who notices the pain or the only one Gene lets in that far. I'm leaning towards the second. Despite losing his brother, his mum and Sam, or maybe because of that, he's acutely uncomfortable with expressing any emotions other than anger and lust. Gene's the kind of man who's never let anybody see him cry…if he cries at all. _

_There are things he can't share without damaging that larger than life persona of his. Ray, Chris, Shaz and the rest of the team rely on that persona, they need it. I don't. I can handle having a boss who, underneath his Mancunian exoskeleton, has less brittle parts. He has flaws and makes mistakes just like everybody else but the others don't see that. They see the Manc Lion and think he's great, in all meanings of the word. I see Gene and I think he's good…good, kind, decent, honourable, even compassionate…of course he's more comfortable with being great. Hiding feels safer. God knows I do enough hiding myself._

_I don't let anybody see me wishing he was mine, really mine, not just a bloody figment. I wish that he was real and in the present day with us Molls, and yes, I wish he was as mine in every possible way. It's beyond ridiculous to feel the way I do about a figment of Sam Tyler's imagination. At some level I realise I'm having feelings for myself which is a level of narcissism I didn't think I had in me. I can't help it. The only thing I can do is never tell him. In the unlikely event that it provoked a declaration from him…it would be cruel when nothing can ever happen. I don't want to hurt him. Ok I might have slapped and punched him in the past and I do, on occasion want to do it again, but I couldn't inflict real pain on him. I turned down a chance to get home to you earlier because I couldn't betray him._

_God I have to get out of here before I start wanting to stay with him. I can't leave you on your own. I can't make you repeat my childhood. I have to leave…soon. Rose, Rose is the way out. It has to be._

* * *

_Damn you Martin Summers for being a Machiavellian son of a bitch and damn you Gene Hunt for not believing in me._

_November the tenth was...I wasn't thinking clearly. I just wanted to get home to you Molly. I was, I am, desperate to leave this place. The more I find myself liking it here the more desperate to leave I become. I said I didn't know if he was my ally or my enemy. Now I know for sure. He was the best friend I had here, as odd as it sounds, and now he hates me. I was just confused, still trying to figure out how this world worked. I wondered what he'd do if he found me out Molls, I know that now as well…only he didn't find me out, I told him. I don't use the word explosion lightly but that's what it felt like…he threatened to kill me. I don't believe he'd actually do it but he was so angry he might have genuinely wanted to._

_I stood there while he bellowed at me in front of the entire department, then walked away but he was the one who walked away from me, us, the connection I know we have…had. My God, he thinks __**he's**__ adrift. If he's adrift I've just been thrown overboard in shark infested water and abandoned. If I could only say…if he'd given me a chance to explain… I didn't think it would hurt this much, that being utterly and comprehensively rejected by another man would…it's not the same. Gene isn't your dad. I'm not left with a six month old daughter to raise on my own. I'm not drowning. It just feels like it. I'm holding every breath for you Molls._

_Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Gene is a threat to me…in the same way he was to Sam. Sam gave up his career, his life, to return to the past. He was convinced that he was more alive there than in the real world. God…I said that too didn't I? It's probably for the best that I told him the truth. Now I don't have any distractions. There's nothing to keep me here, nothing that means anything to me. He's convinced himself that he means nothing to me so really Molls I should thank him. Sam's way out was walking away when he was needed, abandoning Gene to his fate. He's made it so very easy for me to do the same. How could anybody blame me if I wasn't there tomorrow, I've been suspended, not to mention the fact that there was a very vocal threat to my life._

_Nobody would blame me if I wasn't at King Douglas Lane tomorrow, nobody but me. I have to see this through to the end. Summers will be there, this is why he came back, so he has to be there. If I can find him and stop him I'll go home and none of this will matter anymore. My leaving will make both me and Gene very happy. I doubt if he ever wants to see me again.  
_

_He thought we were the ones, that we had a connection. God damn him but he was right, he is right and I'm not cold enough to abandon the team, no matter what has been said and done. He's implied all sorts about me, all but said that he doesn't think you exist…and I slapped him again…but that doesn't mean I'm not…that I don't…_

_  
He'd never tell anybody but he can play guitar, a bit…I blame Elvis. I think he can see through everything but my…if he knew…if this had been the tape Summers had left for him everything would have been different…could have been different. I don't even know what I'm saying. Definitely time to go to bed. Big day tomorrow._

_

* * *

  
_

_My first thought when I woke up was my God, it's beautiful. The sun is out and there are no clouds in the sky. It seems wrong to not have a pathetic fallacy with dark threatening clouds and the distant rumble of thunder for the big finale. At the very least it could be bright but cold outside. Bright but cold…it sounds like a performance evaluation…one of mine. I might be seeing you again today or I might end up stuck in this place forever and the first thing that struck me was that it's a beautiful day. I really must be crazy._

_I don't know if I can do this alone Molls, part of me thinks I have to, the rest of me wishes I'd had a choice, but I don't, so I'll put on my make-up and pray for a miracle._

_If God's listening I'll be home in a few hours and we can tell each other everything that's happened since that day by the Thames._

_I could tell you his favourite colour's green and he loves to argue…and it kills me. His mother's beautiful. He has his father's eyes. And if you ask me if I love him...if you ask me if I love him...I'd lie._

_If I really believed I was talking to you now that lying would be pointless but I know you can't hear me, that you haven't heard anything I've said since I was shot…except Gene's name._

_I know what I have to do now. I have to go to King Douglas Lane and stop Summers…if that means he has to die then I can pull the trigger if I have to. Gene didn't take my gun, only my badge._

_I'm ready Molls. I'm coming home. I love you._

The tape whirred as it was rewound.

_I love you._

More whirring.

_I love you._

_I love you._

A phone rang down the hall. A minute of silence passed then footsteps approached. A desperate hope made him look up as the door opened.

"Still no change…" He looked down and away to hide his all too apparent disappointment. "Tea's in half hour." Annie turned to leave then changed her mind. "If you want to…well you know where I am." He ignored her offer, again.

Once the door was closed again Gene rewound the tape to the beginning as if hearing it one more time would provide the answers and comfort that he hadn't got from it before.


End file.
